Why do you want to work with Business Process Flows
There are some distinct advantages that Business Process Flows give you when working with model-driven apps. The primary use is that it gives users an easy overview when completing certain steps in a workflow or process that otherwise would be hard to visualize or display. The Business Process Flow makes sure that your process is not only streamlined across your organization. But also ensures that users always know exactly the current step they are at, and you can easily show what is required in order to move to the next step.
One example could be a stage-gate model for a project.
You want to make sure that your users follow the same steps in the process each time. Going through each gate in a specific order, making sure that all necessary fields are filled out in the order needed. All fields could be available on your main form, but not all fields are required at the beginning of a project, or even at the third stage of a project. So guiding users through the steps by using the Business Process Flow, ensures that users only focus on the required steps at any point in the process.
This could of course also be done using field visibility, tab visibility, business rules for making fields required, recommended, etc. And even through scripting. However, those solutions could hinder users in filling out fields beforehand. Even if some information is not needed before a later stage, it could be that the information is available for users at an earlier stage, but just not required.
Using a Business Process Flow solves this by making all fields available on the form, but only making certain fields required at certain points. This is standard, out-of-the-box functionality that comes with the Power Platform, so therefore we should utilize this as much as possible.
It’s also possible to make very complex Business Process Flows that branch into several different conditions, based on your choices throughout the process. I will cover this in a later post. For now I am going to focus on how Business Process Flows work in general, and how the data between the main table and the business process flow is transferred.
So, let’s dive into how they are made
The basic building blocks of a Business Process Flow
When working with creating Business Process Flows we go to the maker portal and through our solution we create a new Business Process Flow.
So let’s say we want to go on a trip. We have a table for logging our trips already. But to make it easier to track each step, we’ll make a Business Process Flow for the entire process as well so its easier to keep track of what’s important for each step.
So I’ll select “New” > “Automation” > “Process” > “Business Process Flow”
I’m now prompted to put a name for the process itself and also provide the table which is my basis for the process (in this case its the “Trip” table).
Now. What does does it create two things. It creates the process, and it creates an additional table that stores all extra data related to the process. Things like the current step of the process, when the process was started, who started it, who changes it, etc.
The table should be added automatically to the solution (it usually just takes a little while. If its not automatically added, we can always do this manually by ourselves. I simply select the process and then select Advanced and “add required objects”. Below are two different ways of accessing this through the menus (either directly from the process itself or from the menu in the ribbon)
Next up is changing the process. Lets click on the process from our solution overview and start adding new stages.
The process always starts out with a single stage and a single field for the stage. Unlike when you are working with a form, you won’t be able to add new fields to the stage from this view.
There is a lot of different items we can add to the different stages of the business process flow. But let’s start out with the most simple areas. Data Steps and Stages
We add those by going to Add and then selecting either Add stage or Add data step
Data steps
The data steps are simply the fields from your source table that are added to the flow. So this can be anything you want to make sure is filled out correctly for each stage. Even making fields mandatory for a specific stage, instead of making them mandatory for the entire table. Making a column mandatory prevents you from creating a new record without filling out all mandatory fields, whereas using the mandatory data steps can help control the process so you are only required to fill out specific fields to move past a certain stage.
There is a limit of 30 fields that can be added for each stage.
Stages
I’m going to add some stages for my sailing trip. So I’ll select Add Stage and then click on the small plus sign on the right side of the first stage.
https://powerappsviking.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-13-185733.png
It’s not possible to add a new stage before the first stage. But stages can be added after or before any of the subsequent stages.
We’ll also click on the stage itself and give it a new name in the menu on the left side of the screen under the “properties”.
IMPORTANT It’s important to remember to click on “Apply” in the bottom right corner after changing any information, such as the name, details of a data step or a stage. If you don’t click apply each time, the information is not saved and you lose the changes you were trying to make.
I have now named my stages, and I have defined some data steps for each stage. Now I can click on “Validate” to make sure there is nothing missing in the BPF. After that I can click on “Update” and make sure my changes are pushed to my app.
There is a limit of 30 stages that can be added for a business process flow.
I can now open my app and when I create a new record on the Trip table, the Process Flow shows up like this:
Now we have completed our first initial business process flow and are ready to tackle the more advanced settings, like adding Workflows, conditions, etc.
Those will be covered in a separate post.
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